Justin Bonello

I just got back from spending a week on a farm called Elandsvlei, situated on the dirt road between Ceres and Calvinia in the Tankwa Karoo. Reading this, many of you might think I was absolutely insane going in to the Karoo in a +40°C summer and I’ll admit that this region is not on the top of anyone’s travelling bucket list (especially in summer), but this is precisely why I love it.

On the way there, I’m on Fire by Kasabian blared out of my Disco’s speakers more times than I can remember - it’s definitely my song for 2012 - and the quality of the sound was phenomenal (regardless of the dirt road). The further I got away from the city noises and stimulation pollution (debit orders, cell phones and business meetings) the more I felt myself relaxing in to the road.

The reason I wanted to go to Elandsvlei was because it’s the farm where I got my first taste of Karoo life as an 11-year-old whippersnapper. My mom, who worked on continuity at the time, was working on the set of two Afrikaans movies Verspeelde Lente and Anna, which took more than six months to film, so my sister and I spent many weekends on the farm, and this is where my love affair with the Karoo first started. I remember Elandsvlei as a place of abundance and my most vivid memories are of spending time with the ouma of the Hough family in her kitchen in the early hours of the morning where she was always busy baking bread and rusks and of swimming in the river with the young Hough kids for hours on end. More than 30 years later I was curious to see it again and looked forward to returning to a place that shaped one of my favourite childhood memories.

To understand my fascination with the Karoo you’ve got to slow down, because if all you know about this semi-desert is what you see out your car window when you speed past it on the N1 on your way to JHB or Cape Town, you’ll never understand its heartbeat, its people or what makes them tick. When you spend time in landscapes so vast, you’re lucky (or perhaps unlucky) if three cars drive past you in one day and the only noise you’ll hear is the sound of your own thoughts. Serious.

After driving from Cape Town, over the Bainskloof Pass I arrived in Ceres. My camera crew had left Cape Town two days ahead of me to suss out the space and shoot those epic beauty scenes you see in all of my shows. The moment my tyres hit the gravel, my cell phone lost its signal. Bliss!

About 100 kms into the journey to Elandsvlei I saw our camera vehicle (a short wheelbase Defender) parked next to the road. It was odd. To get a better picture of this situation, you should know that the Tankwa Karoo is a vast kaleidoscope of beige and brown, shade is nothing more than a distant memory and heat lifts off the road in waves as far as the eye can see. The only form of life I had seen since while chasing my first dust clouds in to the Karoo was a dead Cape Cobra in the middle of the road. What I didn’t expect to see was Darren (2nd Camera) and Louis (Stills Photographer) standing next to the Defender (AKA the Panther). Their faces were red and they looked kind of annoyed – not exactly the welcoming party I had in mind. Turns out that when Sunel (Director of Photography) and Brad (Camera Operator) had left earlier that morning to come meet me in Ceres, Brad had accidentally kept the keys to the Panther in his pocket. This meant that Darren and Louis had been stranded next to the road, in temperatures in the mid 40s, for more than six hours. That’s a long time when you don’t have something to keep you occupied, but luckily for them they had Karoo smarts and had water – a prime prerequisite for life in the Karoo. We all had a good laugh and call it the Broke Back Karoo Moment… Darren and Louis know each other REALLY well now. All’s well that ends well…except for poor Brad who was punished – he wasn’t allowed to swim for a day. He doesn’t know this yet, but there are three more punishments to come, designed especially for our own entertainment. 

I arrived in Elandsvlei before sunset (can you believe it?!) and spent my first night on the stoep of our cottage overlooking the Doring River and counting stars. The only noise I could hear were the distant sounds of baboons barking – they’re completely wild and there’s something about them in that space that makes you realise just how small and insignificant we really are.

I spent the rest of the week filming and reconnecting with my childhood. We got up at 5.30 in the mornings to watch and film sunrise and during the day I spent time with Cobus and Tilla Hough. They’ve sold the farm and seven generations of hard work is about to go belly up, which is incredibly sad, but Cobus says he’s had 8 years to say goodbye. It’s a crying shame, but I felt privileged to be there and when we go to AfrikaBurn in April, we’ll stay over on the farm to say our final goodbyes.
 
Rule number one when you’re working in the Karoo is that you’ve got to plan your days according to the time (say heat), so get an early start and then between 12 and 4 in the afternoon you should try to stay out of the sun as much as possible – the heat will drain all your energy if you don’t. Our solution was to spend some of those hours inside the Doring River, cooling off and playing my version of ‘water rugby.’ (During one of these games in the water, Brad wasn’t allowed to play. He had to sit and watch us from the hot, uncomfortable rocks on the banks of the river…for hours).

That week we put our Landies through their paces – Elandsvlei doesn’t have the smoothest roads, but the Defenders performed brilliantly. I had to leave my Discovery at the farmhouse from day one, because I had two punctures on the way there (not the car’s fault, but those bloody Karoo roads)…which reminds me I really have to change those tyres before my next trip. 

Back in the 19th century, G.A Farini travelled through the Karoo and his description of the arid landscape was this: ‘Hell could not be a far way off this place.’

He obviously didn’t have a Land Rover. 
And that’s all I have for you for now – I don’t want to give away too much before the series airs. Next week we’re leaving for Jansenville and I’ll tell you all about it when we’re back!

PS: If you’re planning a trip in to the Karoo, beware your car’s tyres! With that being said, one of the best Karoo Life Saver tips I can give you? Take a puncture repair kit!

Happy travelling!

Who would have thought that in February this year I would have had my Land Rovers for more than two years? Let me take you on a trip down memory lane.
 
In 2009 Cooked in Africa Films felt like kids on Christmas morning. Why? Because our fleet of Land Rovers had arrived, including one long-wheelbase Defender, one short-wheelbase Defender pick-up and my very shiny, very fast 100% muscle car, the Discovery 4 TD V6 SE. Before the Disco, I was driving around in my little 1.3 Diesel bakkie, so when I jumped into the Discovery it felt like I had gone from office boy to president.
 
It’s easy to talk about the Disco and Defender fleet when we’re on the tar road – it’s a smooth smooth ride, but put us on the challenging back roads and we’re in our element.

That year alone we covered more than 60 000kms, without breaking down once (unless you consider me breaking the sunroof, back window and two windscreens) and in 2010 we went way over the 100 000kms mark and filmed 45 episodes – a feat literally unheard of in the film industry. We zigzagged all over Southern Africa, from destinations as far removed as Biesiesfontein on the West Coast, played with various 4x4 modes in the sand on the (6 hours longer) road to Thonga Beach Lodge just beneath Mozambique, opted to take the Trans Kalahari Highway through Botswana to get to Namibia and put our fleet through its paces in the magnificent mountain kingdom of Lesotho on the Mafika Lisiu Pass (Southern Africa’s version of the Himalayas) en route to Matobeng Village on the banks of the Katse Dam.

Just when I was getting attached to the Discovery 4 TD V6 SE, Land Rover took it away and gave me the Land Rover V8 HSE – not that I complained! If the Disco 4 TD V6 SE is a muscle car, the V8 HSE is its personal trainer. Even though 2011 was a lot about making other people’s dreams come true, I still got to play, and put my new baby through its paces from Durban to Grahamstown when we set off for the back-breaking journey with Barry Armitage and Joe Dawson for The Ride of the Peacemaker. They had to do the journey on horseback, but luckily for us we had our trusty Landy workhorses. We ended up in back waters of the Eastern Cape, with lots of mud, rain, late nights, long hours, and very little sleep, and although we were broken by the end of it, our cars were not.

From a filming side, we couldn’t have asked for a better fit. My Director of Photography (DOP), Sunel, drives the short-wheelbase pick-up, which has been customised into a one-of-a-kind camera vehicle. The other Defender is a long-wheelbase people carrier and is often crammed to the roof with tents, blow-up mattresses, cooler boxes and other odds and ends we need to survive on the road.

In a nutshell, both Defenders are perfect support vehicles and to boot, anyone who drives one gets to do the Defender wave. I’ve tried the wave in my Discovery, but have not had success. I’m on a mission to start a new Disco-Wave movement, so if you see me waving, wave back!

And now, here we are. It’s 2012 and there hasn’t been an apocalypse…yet. Last year took us into Mongolia, Iceland, Burundi, Zanzibar and all over Cape Town, but this year is going to be EVEN BIGGER, but I’ll tell you all about it in my next column.

Right now we’re getting ready for our next road trip. Tomorrow we’re going to a farm called Elandsvlei in the Karoo to continue work on my new series and book. The Landies are packed to the brim and there’s an air of excitement in the office. The Cooked crew are itching to start travelling again, and we’ve only been back for a week, but that’s how we roll. And yes, we’ll be taking the back roads. And yes, we’ll only arrive after dark – but that’s how we like it.
 
Catch up when I’m back! 

As usual, there’s not a lot of time for sitting still at the Cooked office. Well, at least not for my crew. And I am jealous.

This week I waved goodbye to Peter Gird and the Charly’s crew. They set off to film the last episode of Charly’s Cake Angels. In Zanzibar. ZANZIBAR! I keep thinking to myself, how only 9 years ago, we were begging our way through the pilot of Cooked to make my dream a reality. Nothing fancy – just the basics. And now, nine years later, I’m sitting in my cold (made worse by winter) office in Cape Town, daydreaming about sunny skies and cocktails in Zanzibar.

On the other side of Africa, Sunel (my D.O.P) and Wes (my post producer) have left me behind to sort out the filming logistics for the Long Miles Coffee Project in Burundi. BURUNDI! WITHOUT ME!

Oh, and have I mentioned Barry Armitage and The Ride crew will be leaving for Mongolia in August? MONGOLIA. For the toughest endurance horse race in the world. IN THE WORLD. And I won’t be there for that either.

I might seem a little jealous but then again I’m a natural traveller. It’s what I do for a living. BUT I get to go on my own adventure. And I think it’s going to be the best one of my life, because I get to share this adventure with my wife.

You see, at the end of July I’ll pack away my GPS and replace it with a baby chair in the back of my Discovery. Not forever. Just for a little while. I’ll be learning how to change nappies, make a baby burp, how to sing a lullaby and how to understand baby talk. At least I’m an early riser, so when the baby starts screaming it’ll be easy to wake up my wife. Or am I the one that’s supposed to get up? I’m not sure what the rules are yet, but I’ve got a month to figure it all out.

In September I’ll be hitting the road again, road-tripping through the Karoo to find the hidden stories covered in dust and to get back some of that old-school forgotten knowledge, a little bit of getting back to the basics. And I can’t wait!

I’ve been stuck in the office way too long and want to feel that pure joy of being on the open road when I drive over Sir Lowry’s pass - away from day to day pressures, debit orders, overdrafts, deadlines and credit cards. I’ve done the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho and most of Southern Africa. I’m looking forward to putting my Discovery 4 HSE V8 through its paces in the bone-jarring Karoo.

Justin

In the beginning of March I took delivery of my new Land Rover V8 HSE and in a real cruel twist of fate got to drive it from the Land Rover Cape Town dealership to the MyCiti bus depot (a total distance of about 200 meters) – where I had to hand the keys across to my office wife and catch a bus to Cape Town International. Destination – the UK.

The next three weeks made me feel like a jet-setter.

I left SA on one of those perfect Cape Town days for 3 days of meetings in London with the BBC, Travel Channel, etc., followed by a quick jump across to Iceland to spend two weeks with Riaan Manser on his next adventure, a 2200km circumnavigation of Iceland by kayak with Dan Skinstad (Bob’s brother).

London is London, but Iceland is amazing – especially for a South African guy whose total experience of snow is being up in the highlands of Lesotho in Winter.

In a strange way, it reminds of the Karoo – just with snow and ice and icebergs and bloody cold weather. 90% of the population lives in two towns, Reykjavik and Akarei – the rest (of the population) are spread out across thousands of kilometers – so for the most part, you have that same sort of eerie silent landscape that I associate with the Great Karoo – just a damn sight colder. I arrived in -9° Celcius weather (after leaving Cape Town at a balmy 39° – a temperature swing of almost 50 degrees), and headed straight into the thick of it.

My job in Iceland was to set up my filming crew, build camera rigs for the kayaks, make sure that all the logistics were sorted out, make sure Riaan and Dan departed - then spend three days flying economy back to South Africa before I could even test drive my new Disco.

Simple. Not really.

Filming in Southern Africa is often hard – filming in another country thousands of kilometers away with new and trying conditions is even harder, but I guess that’s what makes us South Africans so strong – you can chuck us into any environment… and we’ll handle. 

So back to my story and the cruel twist of fate.

Anyone who’s ever had the privilege of climbing into a new car understands what I mean…   I was just about to fall in love with my new baby when she was cruelly snatched away from me while I spent three weeks doing the donkey on the other side of the world.

By the time I got back to SA, I was itching to put my HSE through its paces.

I’ve now had her for just over two months and I feel like I’m only just qualified to talk about her.

First off, it looks virtually the same as the Discovery 4 TD V6 SE – in fact the first time I jumped in her – I was thinking to myself that she looks and feels like her predecessor – but the minute you push the start button, slide the gear shift into drive, pull out of the parking lot and hit the open road… you discover that there’s a whole lot more under the hood. After that first home coming drive – her name came to me. And for anyone who has owned a Land Rover… christening your baby is just as important as giving your first-born child a name.

My previous Discovery was Mother Ship, my new one ... Rocket Ship.

But let me explain why.


Where the Turbo Diesel purred, the petrol V8 growls. Raylene (my office wife) phoned me today – she says I have three fines from last month - I didn’t get three fines in the whole of last year (and I covered 60000 km’s) – so you get the picture. Sit back, strap yourself in and put foot. This 2.7 ton rocket ship is going to result in G Force.

Ok. So lets chat about how I’m going to put this baby through her paces.

Tomorrow I head off to the Wildcoast  - from Cape Town it’s 1200 kilometers of N2 followed by a little bit of dirt road (if I’m lucky it’ll rain and the dirt roads will turn into those quagmires that the Transkei is famous for). Then, in early May, I’m taking part in an 8 day adventure called The Ride of Sir Harry Whackalong Smite – 10 Land Rovers and 8 days of following the old ox wagon trails from Cape Town to Grahamstown (just think old mountain passes, river crossings and sleeping in the bush)  – followed by 3 weeks of criss crossing the Karoo and the Southern Cape for my new series… The Great Food Hoodwink.

If you hear the old David Bowie classic “This is ground control to Major Tom”… blasting past you tomorrow… know that my rocket ship and I are on the road…

Next month: Justin talks about the Land Rover Family, Leopards and feeling like the President.

I’m writing this from Reykjavik, Iceland. I thought the high mountains of Lesotho were freezing, but this puts extreme temperatures on a whole new level. Today’s temperature is -6 ºC - no amount of chocolate vodka is going to help me feel my toes again!

I’m here to get my crew ready for filming ‘Around Iceland on Inspiration’ with Riaan Manser and Dan Skinstad. They’re going to kayak around the perimeter of Iceland for four months…it’s an inspiring story and makes me want to do something like ‘Around Africa in my Land Rover.’ That would rock!

It’s been a bloody crazy month leading up to our departure for Iceland, and I realise how lucky I am to have my crew. The little Cooked machine seems to have hit boiling point and the only fuel that keeps us all sane is our passion for our projects.

Last year, we travelled close to 60 000kms in each our beloved Landies, and the fleet is going strong. They’re just as hardy as we are, so it’s a good fit. At the moment, we have four productions on the go. In April we start shooting two more.

One is “The Great Food Hoodwink”, which is going to take us all over Africa, so it’s great that we’ve got Land Rover on board again. The other is one I can’t name yet, but what I can tell you is that it’s going to be huge and will definitely tap into the South African psyche.

At the beginning of March I said goodbye to my beloved Mother Ship, the Discovery 4 Turbo Diesel V6 SE. My depression soon turned into elevation when I sat behind the wheel of my brand new V8 HSE. I’m still playing around with names for her…I think Rocket Ship is well suited. I’ve only managed to drive her around the block and to and from work. I’m looking forward to the long hauls around the country. From the little taste I’ve had so far and that gravity defying moment when I first put my foot on the pedal I instantly knew that this new baby is the perfect travel companion.

I’ll tell you more about her in a couple of weeks (that’s about as long as it takes to get to know your new baby).

Best,

Justin Bonello

Getting the keys to Justin’s new dream machine!

Justin Bonello, bush-cook, traveller and filmmaker speaks to us about the Land Rover family, undiscovered territories and the year that’s just passed.

This past year will go down in my log-book as the most intense year of my life! There. I said it.

I guess it’s easy to look back now, while I sit planning the year ahead and reflect on the year that was. I’m currently on the Wild Coast hiding from the work world. My phone’s off. It’s a bit inclement outside. I’ve spent the last week or two catching up on sleep, fishing and replenishing my store of mojo.

Now I feel like I’m ready to do it all over again.

I must get about a thousand emails a year from guys and girls who think that I lead the most awesome life (and in some respects I do), but no one really knows what goes on behind the scenes:

I’m away for six months of the year (from my wife Eugenie, my son Dan and my dogs Kelpe, Chilli and Kassler). This year alone I travelled more than 50 000kms in my Land Rover (collectively with all three vehicles more than 100 000 kilometres, keeping in mind that I’m not counting miles spent in the air or on foot).

When we’re filming, I call it Sesame Street after the children’s programme.  My filming crew (nine strong) and I are actually a motley bunch that live out of each others’ pockets for months on end. Put a small group of friends and professional filmmakers together in a small space (our vehicles are mostly our homes and offices), remove all their creature comforts, add to the mix thousands of kilometres, 18 hour days for up to three months at a time, drive across every landscape imaginable, shoot an episode every 5-6 days and see what happens! I often think we should create a reality show just based on our epic journeys! Because life on the road is so hard-core, we all assume roles beyond our end credit titles. Mine for example is presenter, director, driver, physiatrist, psychologist, counsellor, dust-kicker, shepherd, production assistant and, of course, cook. It takes a special breed of men and women to do what we do. You need mental resilience and physical stamina. Straight.

So far we’ve crossed bone jarring Lesotho in the dry season, the wildness of the Wild Coast, crossed through Botswana en route to Namibia, gone off the grid in the Namaqualand and followed Dick King’s route from Durban to Grahamstown with a 3 berth horse box in tow! Next year is looking like more of the same.

When I got my fleet in late 2009 (A Defender pickup, a long wheel base Defender station wagon and Disco 4 TD V6 SE) there was a gentle trial period, a little bit of dirt roads and a whole lot of tar. Then I got serious. We embarked on a two-month trip around the circumference (more or less) of South Africa.

And when I say  ‘we embarked on a two-month trip’, it’s not a statement to be taken lightly - you’ve got to understand that you don’t just jump in your car and hit the road with the windows rolled down and your favourite song playing on the radio. Imagine it like something close to planning your December holiday…for your entire family, packing in everything but the kitchen sink! It works like this:

We use the 110 Defenders as grunts – they do all the unglamorous donkey-work…one of them was converted into a purpose-built camera vehicle (driven by Louis Hiemstra (photographer) and Darren Ilett (second camera). The other is what we call a unit vehicle – it carries food, tents and all the bits and pieces to make our logistical nightmare easy, including three crew: Raylene Stevens (production manager), Megan Bryan (production coordinator) and Helena Lombard (writer, researcher and social media guru).

The Discovery carries yours truly, Craig Ryneveld (sound guy), Alexis Burg (producer) and Sunel Haasbroek (director of photography). The Disco (for it’s class and the size of it’s engine) runs lean. On the open road I get 100kms on 9 litres in town I get 100kms on 12 litres, and when towing a trailer with my kayak on the roof and the dogs in the back, I get 100kms per 13.9 litres. I once had another well-known Diesel pickup that was known to guzzle diesel by the kilometre – on the open road (admittedly loaded), I used to get about 100kms on 16 litres.

The Defenders are great, but the Disco is awesome. AWE-SOME.

The only thing I’ve changed is the tyres. I got rid of the standard ones and replaced them with the Land Rover sanctioned Wranglers – they’re a bit more noisy on the open road (a small sacrifice) and I’ve realised that I’ll have to have two sets of tyres for her. One set of stock standard ones that I use for the more gentle trips and the other for the bastard trips.

More often than not, we drive into areas I’ve never been to before. The onboard navigation is brilliant, although a little tough to figure out (I’m not the kind of guy who reads manuals) – so there’s been lots of trial-and-error. I used the Garmin Nuvi for the first eight months, then realised it was pointless – the onboard Sat Nav is phenomenal!

This year we filmed 45 episodes, in my game, that’s virtually unheard of, and means we’re constantly on the road, which means we’ve become quite attached to our fleet, so all our cars have been given nicknames to suit their personalities. Quite suitably my Land Rover has been named The Mother Ship.  Above and beyond all the perks mentioned earlier, she’s an automatic, which makes for a much easier ride and comes with a tip-tronic sport setting, which I mainly use for descents (for the really steep downhills I use it in conjunction with the hill descent setting). But most of the time, I sit back and let the 6-speed automatic gearbox perform its magic. And let me tell you, this car runs sweetly and has massive amounts of punch!

Because we’re all a bit Cooked, we stick together, and travel in convoy, with me in the front. To make our journey easier, we travel with two-way radios that we use to keep in touch. Stuff like “watch out for the cows crossing”, “mind the potholes”, “I need to take a leak” and “listen to this song – it rocks!” crackles over our radios as we criss-cross the landscapes to our next destination.  Most days we cover 500kms – that’s about the maximum distance we can do when filming on the road. My crew travel behind me and know I’m putting foot when they see two small puffs of diesel smoke spurting out of the twin exhausts as I hit pedal to the metal to overtake. I then use radio comms to let the rest of the convoy know when it’s safe to overtake – this method of travelling can cut hours out of a travel day, but for some reason, regardless of the distance, we always seem to arrive at our destination in the dark.

I suppose that part of the problem is that I like to travel the road less taken, although there are times when you just want to get from A to B as quickly as possible –but most of the time I like to travel the back roads, and with good reason. So many of us only see Southern Africa through sideways glimpses as we cruise on the National Highways and by-ways – when you travel the back roads… you really see the true Southern Africa.

In the old days (5-6 years ago) I used to travel with a far larger group of friends and crew. Nowadays, I’ve discovered that the smaller the group, the more you get to meet people along the way that eventually become your friends. I now have a network of really stand-up guys and girls across the width and breadth of Southern Africa that I can call friends. When I travel, I only have one rule… be open, be honest and be humble – that way I open myself up to the true joy of the open road and get to meet the people that make me tick.

In the Karoo, I met JP Smit, an independent 25 year-old sheep farmer, Ian from the Bush Pig near the Kei River, Flip Nel in Musina and the old-school Poole family who re-opened my eyes to family and tradition.

But listen, no matter how incredible the experiences and how lucky you are to meet really great people, mishaps are bound to happen. It’s just natural that no matter how careful you are, there’s always bound to be a slip-up around the corner. One of these occasions waited for us in Namibia:

As the nature of our business is to travel and film, it often includes filming while travelling. We use a suction mount in the car to mount a camera on the smooth interior glass surface of the front sun-roof (there are two). We were thinking that we were quite clever for finding a comfortable way to film within the car, until my DOP Sunel, forgot its there and hit the open button.
 
”Crack.”

I had to have the sunroof repaired in Namibia. Most car owners use only one dealership to service their cars, I’ve now been to three dealerships (Cape Town, East London and Windhoek) and the service is always the same – brilliant.
In, out and on your way.

Land Rover seems to have different ethos to customer service and care. I was always told abut how you become part of the Land Rover family, but only now do I realise what that means: beyond the Land Rover ‘wave’ (more common in Defenders), you really do join a family…and it’s not a run of the mill family! Everyone, right from the Head of Marketing down to the Dealership (owners and fitters and turners) goes the extra mile. Land Rover had a really bad rep years ago - I think it was largely urban myth - my experience has been great.

Still not convinced? Here’s another example: In the first two or so months after receiving the car, I was still getting used to the reverse camera (it has a touch screen mount in the centre of the dashboard that is the display for the navigation, audio video and reverse camera.) The Disco is a big car. 2.7 tons of mean-machine. You feel like the president. Mine is pitch black with leather trim. If I had dark windows and a blue flashing light – I could be the president. Anyway, I was lazily looking into the camera and I didn’t see a low slung air conditioning unit.

“Bang!”

I shattered the back window! So, I phoned Land Rover and told them I was really (really) stupid and that I need a new back window. They told me it would take three days (I don’t think there are many idiots who smash the back window, so the part has to come from JHB). John Kimber and the guys at Land Rover Cape Town fixed it in two!

Still, with all this excitement and the lifestyle, I’ll admit that one of the best things to do in my Discovery is driving home.

The biggest danger I’ve discovered (no pun intended) is that this mean machine makes you feel bullet proof. I have yet to come across an obstacle that feels insurmountable. But I’ll make you one promise, I’m going to keep trying…

Best

JB

And of course, the natural reaction of anyone sliding into the driver's seat of a brand new Land Rover...